One fine day in late Spring, the Oasis caravan travelled to Suffolk to visit the Oasis Camel Park near Halesworth.
Friday 6th June, Lilly, Andrea, Serena, Lauren, Tina, Amy, Billie, Jaqui, Lorraine, doggie Penny and myself Theresa met in the Camel Café for greetings and refreshments.
We didn’t sit around for too long because we were keen to join the camel talk session at midday. The talk proved to be extremely interesting, the park owner explained lots about camel history, their evolution and their biology, they’re quite amazing resilient creatures able to eat and digest anything that grows by using their four stomachs, their unique blood cell make up allows them to survive weeks without water.
After the talk the nice man opened a gate allowing us close contact with the camels and give them some food, they were quite tame and inquisitive, was a wonderful experience.
The park doesn’t just have camels, while walking around we found many interesting animals, llamas, alpacas, wallabies, lemurs, birds, donkeys, tortoises and many more, some were accessible to feed by hand using the food purchased in the shop, Tina and Lorraine especially loved this, the goats were the greediest and the fancy coloured chickens the cheekiest.
Walking around the park was hungry business, time for lunch. Back in the café we enjoyed baked potatoes, sandwiches, soup and other goodies. During our lunch break the heavens opened but didn’t last too long, somehow the weather stayed fine for us while we were outside despite a poor weather forecast, the day before and the day after had awful wet and windy weather.
After lunch, time for another walk and find more animals, Billie, Jaqui and Tina found some pedal go-carts, pedalling in random directions rather than racing.
Tina and Lorraine booked some time to do the pet a pet session, I found them cuddled up next to two huge fluffy rabbits, Penny wanted to join in the fun but best not.
Later in the afternoon was perhaps our main event, camels rides. Just four of us paid the tenner each and made our way to the starting point and donned safety helmets.
Of course a persons safety and animal welfare are of prime importance and this being the reason for mounting the camels from a platform rather than from the animals at ground level.
Tina nervously hopped on first followed by a terrified me on the second smaller camel, so glad I got the smaller one. Off we went guided by the animal keepers, we were walked around the park while allowing the camels to snack on bushes and grass, walking outside the compound was the camel’s treat too, they eat anything. Part way round we stopped to pose for photos, this was a fun experience which just had to be captured.
Getting off the camel was not easy for us not so young and spritely but help was at hand when needed.
Next up was Lauren of Arabia who may not have great mobility but she took it all in her stride, followed by Jaqui who rode like a pro, well she had ridden a camel before.
The ride lasted just fifteen minutes or so but the memory will last a lifetime. Andrea kindly made a short video of the camel rides, click this link to view https://youtu.be/O4LV7bKKpw8
No more takers for the camel rides so we all headed back to the café for more drinks, cake and chat about how much fun the day had been and discussing the many other events Oasis will be attending this summer.
Well that was about it for the day, we slowly left via the quite lovely gift shop with lots of quirky camel merch, there was also separate room with interesting hippy type clothing, I picked a handmade Nepalese vest top, perfect for the coming summer festivals.
Oasis at Oasis was such a joy, we must do it again sometime.
Theresa x
oasis norfolk 